Tools Featured in this Teardown

Introduction

Despite its hyper-loyal fanbase, Pebble returned to Kickstarter for a third time in 2016 to fund their next generation of e-paper smartwatches. Their campaign goals were met, but only 1/3 of the promised products were ever shipped—only the Pebble 2 made it to customers. Then, to all of our disbelief, Pebble was devoured by Fitbit who seems to have forgotten that people might still want smartwatches that last more than 3 days on a charge.

Let's see what Pebble's last smartwatch looks like on the inside, and whether or not you'll be able to swap out parts to keep it ticking for... well, forever, hopefully.

This teardown is not a repair guide. To repair your Pebble 2, use our service manual.

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After snapping the eccentric rotating mass (ERM) vibration motor out of its housing on the backside of the display, we can begin to lift up the motherboard...

Only to be snagged by some sneaky display cables!

As we deftly maneuver a spudger to unclip the two(two?) display cables from the underside of the motherboard, we realize with great sadness that the battery and the vibration motor are both hanging on by a solder.

With the display cables free, we can lift out the motherboard and her soldered-on freeloaders.

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Moving past our bamboozlement, we have come to the conclusion that we think Pebble opted for some kind of two-layer e-ink display.

Regular e-ink displays use tiny chambers filled with magnetized ink pigments that can be manipulated with an electric charge. Here it seems that Pebble is instead using two separate displays: one black, and one white.

Unfortunately for us, this inky black screen marked the end of our mostly adhesive-free teardown.

Even with our trusty purple blow dryer, we couldn't seem to loosen the adhesive enough to pry the last layers out without breaking them.

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There's not much left of this watch! Like the company, we are left with a hollow reminder of what was once something great.

We try to dismantle the buttons, like last year, but find that they are built in to the chassis. It would have been nice to simply be able to swap out either side and replace the accompanying buttons, but no such luck here.